New Project

Well hi. Nice to see you remember me, old blog. Thought you might not recognize my password there, that you'd vanished into my memory, taking with you our good times and my best intentions. I'm sneaking up on you in the middle of the night, hoping that my post-performance energy might carry over to this most personal performance, the act of writing, for an audience of one, the toughest crowd I'll ever play to.

I am a writer who does not write. Recently, I practiced being a singer who does not sing. These are ways of being I cannot stand for very long. However vain, however ignoble, I have devoted myself to music, and that is what I simply have to do. Even if my talents have their limits (but doesn't everybody's?), or even if what I have to offer only appeals to a few. We all have our lights to shine. If this isn't mine, what is?

But then there's writing. Why on earth pursue another non-paying artistic passion? In my case, it's a way to confront fears. Fear of failure every time I try to write something new, or making a story as perfect as it's going to be. Fear of failing right this very minute to bring a sentence to a fullfilling close. Sitting down to write, without quite knowing what will happen, is a glimpse into the work of a sculptor, revealing the figure within a stone. It's another way to perform. Earning smiles of excitement in a writing class or feeling the energy of a page bring something new out of me is as exhilirating as anything I'll do in public. And if I don't write, I only confirm that my fears were right all along, that I'm better off failing before I even try. But surely, anything is better than making your fears your reality.

So here's a new idea. In the year or so since I last dropped a post on this blog I've built up my courage to create fiction, I've published one and written several satisfying personal essays, and even became something of a regular contributor to a music magazine. But I'm a dabbler. I hereby make a new plan: I will publish one post a week about my yearlong stay in New York. I am happily returning to my home city for my new husband's new job, which is giving me the chance to try some new career moves, take a new perspective on what I can offer the world, and generally think and act about what I want to be when I grow up. I will write charming accounts of life in our cozy neighborhood. I will share the stresses and joys of big city life.

But I also will write about where art figures into it all, here in the digital age. This past year, I have returned to regular reading, and I've been so happy getting to know fictional characters that I've nearly neglected the real one's in my own life. But what a joy. As I read I will share my favorite - and least favorite - moments as I come across them, and keep track of my progress through literary history. I might also throw in tantalizing bits about the second year of my marriage.

But first, time for bed. I'm not even in New York right now. Not even in Boston, the town I left. I'm in cold and sunny Maine, singing concerts and feeling like royalty. I'm not a superstar, I never will be. But I shared beautiful music with a few people tonight. I was happier for it, and I think they were too.